ZOO. No: why should he cut his throat?
He simply dies. He wants to. He is out of
countenance, as we call it.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Well!!! But suppose
he is depraved enough not to want to die, and to settle
the difficulty by killing all the rest of you?

ZOO. Oh, he is one of the thoroughly degenerate
shortlivers whom we occasionally produce. He
emigrates.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. And what becomes of him
then?

ZOO. You shortlived people always think very
highly of him. You accept him as what you call
a great man.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. You astonish me; and yet
I must admit that what you tell me accounts for a
great deal of the little I know of the private life
of our great men. We must be very convenient to
you as a dumping place for your failures.

ZOO. I admit that.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Good. Then if you
carry out your plan of colonization, and leave no
shortlived countries in the world, what will you do
with your undesirables?

ZOO. Kill them. Our tertiaries are not at
all squeamish about killing.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Gracious Powers!

ZOO [glancing up at the sun] Come. It
is just sixteen o’clock; and you have to join
your party at half-past in the temple in Galway.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [rising] Galway!
Shall I at last be able to boast of having seen that
magnificent city?

ZOO. You will be disappointed: we have no
cities. There is a temple of the oracle:
that is all.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Alas! and I came here
to fulfil two long-cherished dreams. One was
to see Galway. It has been said, ’See Galway
and die.’ The other was to contemplate the
ruins of London.

ZOO. Ruins! We do not tolerate ruins.
Was London a place of any importance?

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [amazed] What! London!
It was the mightiest city of antiquity. [Rhetorically]
Situate just where the Dover Road crosses the Thames,
it—­

ZOO [curtly interrupting] There is nothing
there now. Why should anybody pitch on such a
spot to live? The nearest houses are at a place
called Strand-on-the-Green: it is very old.
Come. We shall go across the water. [She goes
down the steps].

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. Sic transit gloria mundi!

ZOO [from below] What did you say?

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [despairingly] Nothing.
You would not understand. [He goes down the steps].

ACT II

A courtyard before the columned portico of a temple.
The temple door is in the middle of the portico.
A veiled and robed woman of majestic carriage passes
along behind the columns towards the entrance.
From the opposite direction a man of compact figure,
clean-shaven, saturnine, and self-centred: in
short, very like Napoleon I, and wearing a military
uniform of Napoleonic cut, marches with measured steps;
places his hand in his lapel in the traditional manner;
and fixes the woman with his eye. She stops,
her attitude expressing haughty amazement at his audacity.
He is on her right: she on his left.